Wednesday, October 07, 2009

About a month ago I had a meeting with some fine folks from a local college...of course I doodled the main guy and several of the attendees were watching...and they started snickering off and on which kept disrupting the meeting...I had to set up a mini-blind because I wasn't going to stop drawing and they weren't going to stop laughing...so when I went to the meeting last night and introduced myself they went, "Oh you're that guy that drew _______." So of course I stared drawing last night and got the one non-art guy...he was just the note taker...and I sat at the end like a leper in a way so that I had no peepers...because this meeting looked a bit more official...we had a large wooden desk with plug-in ports...and they were serving sliced fruit...

Sunday, October 04, 2009

(click to enlarge)Got some more work and adjustments done...at least now I have a better feel for how I'm doing the body although I will have a lot of value adjustments to do...which will be a 1000 times easier than the head...kind of makes me wish I had done it first...still a lot of work to go and I again feel better about going really slow...and as all my friends say...I am in more ways than one...I made several adjustments to the birds that are vastly improved over what I had sketched in to begin with...looking forward to finishing it sometime in the year 2097...

I know I'm a bit late on the 'facebook craze'...but I need every chance I get to have a laugh plus it seems easier to keep up with some of my friends...so I took the plunge. I don't necessarily get the 'twitter-like' updates that some people post..."I am eating a pickle...tune in for the next thing I do..." but mostly because I don't see how people have that much time or energy...but I do see how many of the networking services aren't bad things and can actually save time...

That being said my initial profile pic was the standard "Jimmy Nuetron Head silhouette'...I immediately received complaints that the pic looked nothing like me...So I downloaded a pic (I've never taken a good pic...of course there may be a reason for that) and I got some heat because it looked too much like me...so I did this doodle to get the best of both worlds. It doesn't look like me because I hardly ever wear a tie...and if I do I forgot how to tie a real one a long time ago so I use the clip-on...and second my arms aren't nearly that hairy...but everything else is pretty much in line...

Thursday, October 01, 2009

(click to enlarge)This one has been a bit slow going...but I've had to take breaks and come back to it several times and make corrections. It is also the biggest item I've worked on...I think the full sheet is 20" by 30"...anyway it takes up most of my drawing table. I've got all the general areas figured out I just have to fill it in...the plan is a full body shot half-way submerged in water with tick birds getting a free ride...the really tough part will be doing the reflections and background...and then going back in and adjusting the values...the one mistake I made...I tried out using carbon pencils for some of the blacks...which worked well...but I only switched to it after I found out that the ebony pencils were still not getting the darks I wanted (partially because of the reflection factor). And of course the carbon doesn't really want to stick into the graphite areas where I had already lade down the blacks because there is no tooth left...

So while I read all of the good points to carbon pencils (the molecules are more uneven so when you lay a patch down they don't reflect light as graphite does....graphite particles are more even and lay down 'smoother' which acts in a way as a mirror...) So while I love the rich blacks I know I have to be careful with using it...and in the future plan better so I know where to use the carbon pencil and where to hit the graphite...